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Materials

During the lab "Which is the Best Fuel" the set up that my group and i had to come up with took some time. At first we tried to look at what the other groups were doing but they were also struggling. The question was, "how do we create a set up so that not as much heat escapes?" The materials around us were just beakers, tape, and foil. The first idea popped up, to use a beaker and place the can and the alcohol lamp inside and seal the top up with foil. This idea didn't work out because there would be no way to enter the setup and light up the wick although we could have taped the beaker with foil and just closed it like a lid but we didn't due to the alcohol lamp not being able to be placed right under the can. The second idea was to use some foil and wrap it around the alcohol lamp and the can. This idea worked. During the first trial, we noticed that we didn't have a way to light up the wick, so we cut a part of the foil so that it would open up like a door and let the lighter in and when it the fire lit we would be able to tape up the foil and ensure minimal heat loss. We found a great set up for the experiment which was convenient because it was easy to resetup as we had to change water over and over for the other trials. At the beginning i thought we would never have foudn a way and we would probably have just copied someone else but in the end we ended up with a unique setup.